Chris Murphy: I Wish Harris Told Voters More that ‘We Could Control Our Borders’

EXCERPT:

MURPHY: “I think we misunderstood the Republicans’ focus on immigration. Yes, some of it was playing to nativism and racism, but a lot of it was about telling Americans that they are not at the mercy of forces beyond their control — in this case, increased global migration — that we can control our borders. And that speaks to Americans who are feeling out of control of their lives. So I think we have to engage in some much more robust economic populism, talk about who has power, talk about how we will tangibly deliver it to Americans who have lost power. And I think that should be the tent pole of our party. That’s the second part of my analysis, that we became very intolerant, very judgmental of people who thought differently than us on social and cultural issues and other tough subjects like guns and climate. I think we should return to the party we were in the ’70s and ’80s when we had economics as the tent pole and then we let in people in who thought differently than us on other social and cultural issues and we fought out those debates inside that tent. That’s a difficult thing for the Democratic Party to do because we’ve applied a lot of litmus tests over the years, but those litmus tests have added up to a party that is pretty exclusionary and is shrinking, not growing.”